For commercial reasons Boeing wanted the new 737 version to handle like the old ones. But changes in the new version required an additional system to handle certain flight situations. The development of that system and the safety analysis of its implications were rushed through. Pilots were not informed of it and not trained to counter its failure.

The added 'maneuver characteristics augmentation system' (MCAS) depended on only one sensor. When the sensor provided false data MCAS engaged and pointed the planes towards the ground. Manual trim using the plane's trim wheel was required to regain flight stability. The pilots were not aware of that. The regulators who certified the plane as safe were unaware of the extend of the problem:

The MCAS system is poorly engineered and the design should never have been certified in the first place. But the issue is even worse. The certification that was given relied on false data.

The first MCAS design, on which the safety analysis and certification was based, allowed for a maximum trim movement by MCAS of 0.6 degree of a maximum of 5 degree. Flight tests proved that to be too little to achieve the desired effects and the maximum movement was changed to 2.5 degree.

No safety analysis for the much greater movement was conducted. The FAA and foreign regulators were not informed of it. Their certification of the 737 MAX was based on misleading data.

But even those certifications were only conditional. They required from Boeing to include relevant training material that explained the MCAS trim system and its potential problems to the pilots.

The original certification for the 737 MAX was issued by the U.S. regulator FAA. The European regulator EASA based its certification on the one the FAA provided but it added several of its own requirements. There is now documentary evidence that Boeing neglected to fulfill at least one of those requirements.

Page 15 of the Explanatory Note discusses "Longitudinal trim at Vmo". Vmo is the maximum operational speed. The trim sets the nose of the plane up or down, independent of other pilot input. Too high up and the plane with lose lift and stall, too low down and the plane will hit terrain.

A failure of the MCAS system could trim the nose down. As a countermeasure the pilots would have to switch the trim system off. They would then manually trim the plane back into a level flight. This was a concern. The EASA note says:

Subsequent to flight testing, the FAA-TAD expressed concern with compliance to the reference regulation based on an interpretation of the intent behind “trim”. The main issue being that longitudinal trim cannot be achieved throughout the flight envelope using thumb switch trim only.

EASA considered the need to use manual trim "unusual". But it allowed it to pass because the required training material would "clearly explain" the issue:

The need to use the trim wheel is considered unusual, as it is only required for manual flight in those corners of the envelope.

The increased safety provided by the Boeing design limits on the thumb switches (for out-of-trim dive characteristics) provides a compensating factor for the inability to use the thumb switches throughout the entire flight envelope. Furthermore, the additional crew procedures and training material will clearly explain to pilots the situations where use of the trim wheel may be needed due to lack of trim authority with the wheel mounted switches.

While the EASA was convinced (by Boeing?) that those situations would be discussed in "additional crew procedures and training material", Boeing did not include it in the training materials for the airlines that bought the planes:

Those situations, however, were not listed in the flight manual, according to a copy from American Airlines seen by Reuters.

Without the additional procedures and training material the 737 MAX would not have been certified. By providing the plane without the required training material Boeing essentially handed incomplete planes to its customers.

The FAA is as regulator far too cozy with lobbyists and aircraft manufacturers. It outsources too much of the certification testing to the manufacturers. It should not have allowed Boeing to install a MCAS that depended on a sole sensor.

But the bigger culprit here is clearly Boeing. The plane was developed in a rush. Even its own engineers doubted that it was safe:

Rick Ludtke, a former Boeing engineer who worked on designing the interfaces on the MAX’s flight deck, said managers mandated that any differences from the previous 737 had to be small enough that they wouldn’t trigger the need for pilots to undergo new simulator training.

That left the team working on an old architecture and layers of different design philosophies that had piled on over the years, all to serve an international pilot community that was increasingly expecting automation.

“It’s become such a kludge, that we started to speculate and wonder whether it was safe to do the MAX,” Ludtke said.

And today we learned that Boeing did not even provide its customers with the "clear explanations" the certifications required it to deliver.

These were not 'mistakes' by some lowly technicians. These were breaches of legal requirements and of trust.

It will take quite long to certify the changes Boeing announced for the 737 MAX. Lawsuits were filed against the company. Orders were canceled. The company is under criminal investigation. The commercial damage to Boeing will likely be larger than currently estimated. It comes on top of a recent WTO ruling that Boeing illegally received billions of dollars in subsidies and will need to compensate its competition.

All these are consequences of bad management decisions.

The development and production of the 787 Dreamliner, announced in 2003, was outsourced all over the world. That led to years of delays and billions in development cost overruns. In 2010 Airbus announced the A-320 NEO as a better alternative to the 737 NG. Boeing was still busy to get the 787 into the air. It had neither the engineering capacity nor the money to counter the NEO with a brand new plane. It hastily revamped the 737, a design from the 1960s, into the 737 MAX. It promised to airlines that the new plane would not require to retrain their pilots. MCAS was specifically designed to allow for that. It was a huge mistake.

Boeing once was an engineering company with an attached sales department. It 2001, when it moved its headquarter to Chicago, it became a dealership with an attached engineering wing. The philosophical difference is profound. It is time for the company to find back to its roots.

It will take quite long to certify the changes Boeing announced for the 737 MAX.

The 737 MAX will NEVER be approved, it is dead in the water. There is too much water under the bridge. The aircraft is too compromised, the company management and leadership is too compromised, the FAA is too compromised, the certification is too compromised, the certification procedures are too compromised, the history is too compromised.

The world will never again have confidence in Boeing - not the 737MAX, not the 787, not any other Boeing aircraft - because the foundations essential to trust have been totally smashed. One by one certifications for all other recent Boeing models will be cancelled. Airbus - as competitor - and European regulators and governments will gleefully assist and nourish the collapse.

Boeing Corporation is finished. It will never recover. It's destiny is now irrevocably predestined: it has already entered a dive from which recovery is impossible. It will ultimately crash into the earth at terminal velocity and be smashed into a million pieces.

...
Boeing was still busy to get the 787 into the air. It had neither the engineering capacity nor the money to counter the NEO with a brand new plane. It hastily revamped the 737, a design from the 1960s, into the 737 MAX. It promised to airlines that the new plane would not require to retrain their pilots. MCAS was specifically designed to allow for that. It was a huge mistake.

Boeing once was an engineering company with an attached sales department. It 2001, when it moved its headquarter to Chicago, it became a dealership with an attached engineering wing. The philosophical difference is profound.

I can't agree that the concept of MCAS was a mistake. Boeing undoubtedly had the expertise to make it work and evidence suggests that the two planes which crashed were flown by inadequately trained pilots. The huge mistake was the change of culture outlined in your final paragraph which allowed 'Marketing' to ignorantly trivialise engineering expertise by imposing unrealistic "or else" deadlines on 'Engineering'.
Imo, this trend towards employing very expensive Managers who specialised in "management" and no particular discipline, began in the early 1970s and was totally out of control by 2000.

I grew up in Tacoma, just south of Seattle, and have followed Boeing all my life.

B wrote
"
Boeing once was an engineering company with an attached sales department. It 2001, when it moved its headquarter to Chicago, it became a dealership with an attached engineering wing. The philosophical difference is profound. It is time for the company to find back to its roots.
"
The only problem I have with b's description is that the changes did not happen overnight by the headquarters move but was part of the gutting of once great companies......HP is another example.

The moral failure that occurred did so because of the profit narrative of private finance. If finance were owned by the public this moral failure would not have occurred.

The moral failure that occurred did so because of the profit narrative of private finance. If finance were owned by the public this moral failure would not have occurred.

The moral failure that occurred did so because of the profit narrative of private finance. If finance were owned by the public this moral failure would not have occurred.

The moral failure that occurred did so because of the profit narrative of private finance. If finance were owned by the public this moral failure would not have occurred.

To me, all other arguments are misdirections and wastes of societies time and energy

In a previous Boeing/MAX thread at MoA someone posted a comment revealing that American Airlines ordered all of their MAX airliners with the full bells & whistles version of MCAS. Superficially at least, this suggests that the airlines which did NOT order the version ordered by AA are hampered by a similar variety of Management Ignorance/ nonchalance as Boeing is suffering. One wonders if AA did a ring-around of other airlines to find out who was, and who wasn't, ordering AA's version of MCAS. Some of these hypothetical conversations would have been 'interesting' because AA decided to stick with its decision to 'waste' money on the enhanced MCAS.

Companies didn't know about the extent of the risk. They didn't know exactly what the "optional" features did and why they mattered. Heck, that wasn't mentioned anywhere in the documents, so how could they know? By default, a company will assume that the features are cosmetic more than anything else, and that any optional feature won't change a thing when it comes to security and risks. Heck, Boeing deliberately putting this in options is probably ground enough for a massive lawsuit.
One has to actually wonder if Boeing didn't "advise" fellow American companies to buy the whole package to limit the risks.

One of those necessary "other steps" was to turn off electricity to the motor used to force down the nose of the plane. All this without telling the pilots or regulators.

Yes, massive malpractice. Personally, I hope Boeing pays dearly on all fronts. And the "kill government" bean counters in the US Congress who let the FAA wither to a shadow organization need a swift kick in the rear.

I don't share the same certainty that this wound to Boeing will prove fatal (it still would have military contracts and maintenance of proven airframes) but it is staggeringly grave. The forthcoming lawsuits will have the vultures picking it apart, still kicking or not.

In general, this is a case study in a malady that has claimed scores of once-great American corporations that now threatens the entire 'Western' economy. As B documents, the disease is an over-emphasis on management at the expense of engineering. On selling the product over the quality of the product. Psychohistorian notes HP, one could add GE, AT&T, GM, Ford, essentially all American manufacturing. This process began in the late 70s, took steroids with NAFTA and has now reached an orgasmic fever-pitch. As someone who values education, I still have to blame the MBAs and business schools with their Smartest-in-the-Room degrees. The focus on finance, stock price, bonuses with utter disregard to brand image, the customer base, and longevity.
And the elites and taking heads twist their hands, asking "Why are they so angry" "How could they elect Trump" as the rising tide of their own creation threatens to drown the whole system. Sometimes the are no words...

One more link in the chain of the people at Boeing responsible for hundreds of deaths are the technical documentation team at the company. As a former technical writer, I would have never signed off on not providing sufficient documentation to train any pilot flying the plane. This certainly appears to have been a process driven by sales and marketing, with the engineers abandoning their duty--but but the documentation team abandoned their duty as well.

Yes, the lawsuits will break Boeing - as it so richly deserves - but the company is another "too big to fail" The MIC needs that war sauce. So who will pay in the end? Those same ole chumps: The "Murkan Taxpayers.

It goes without saying that this is going to cost Boeing a fortune in global law-suits, but much like the Microsoft and Google loses in Europe, will be easily absorbed as a tax write-off, and the Show will go on. Who their future buyers will be is anybody's guess.

thanks b... i appreciate the details that gives a wider perspective on this...

my position is a bit like pyschohistorians... it seems to me the stock market, mutual funds, retirement plans of gov'ts and all of this has created a system where the financial people can circle the wagons on individual companies like boeing and they will... for us to change this system of finance we have created is going to take a lot of shocks to the system.. frankly, many people are not going to like it and most people don't have the slightest interest in what there money is invested in, just so long as it generates more money..

i don't know how it changes when everything is based off financial types dictating everything.. there is a reason the politicians are in bed with wall st and especially so when everything is built off money.. it sounds simplistic to say money is the root of all evil, but i do believe boeings situation here is not an isolated situation.. too much of everything is being decided on 'economics' without any respect for everything else.. it is one big self supporting system too... little people are along for the ride, but will not ultimately benefit from the overall design which serves a very small percentage of people..

If I remember correctly, Boeing has been cited as one of the largest components of the "American Manufacturing" sector. The cancellation of contracts (that are now occurring) will have negative impacts on our balance of trade figures, that are already in the pits. Unexpected consequences ? ? ?

American Airlines ordered all of their MAX airliners with the full bells & whistles version of MCAS.
Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Mar 29, 2019 11:24:08 AM | 6

Companies didn't know about the extent of the risk. ...
One has to actually wonder if Boeing didn't "advise" fellow American companies to buy the whole package to limit the risks.
Posted by: Clueless Joe | Mar 29, 2019 11:41:16 AM | 7

AA being in the US, it is entirely conceivable that they had inside information on the MCAS dangers that Boeing evidently deliberately tried to conceal. Many passenger jet pilots are former airforce pilots, and someone could so easily have had a personal link to someone in Boeing. Some investigative journalist should go to AA and ask them why they went for the option, how did they judge it at the time, did they have inside information.

There are no 'adequately trained' pilot for the 737 MAX when they're fundamentally different aircraft with different flight characteristics and flying system than those of the previous 737. As i recall pilots would need to complete certification to fly an aircraft model which include tens of hours of simulator training. There's no such thing for the 737 MAX yet.

@ BM 1
I don't share the same certainty that this wound to Boeing will prove fatal (it still would have military contracts and maintenance of proven airframes) but it is staggeringly grave. The forthcoming lawsuits will have the vultures picking it apart, still kicking or not.
Posted by: Don Wiscacho | Mar 29, 2019 11:53:46 AM | 9

I could easily have worded my claim in terms of the passenger jet arm of Boeing rather than the corporation as a whole, and to that extend I would somewhat agree with you. I am certain that the passenger jet arm is totally finished; however it wouldn't at all surprise me if the entire corporation will be finished. The scandal itself will certainly have an adverse effect on confidence in Boeing leadership and raise questions about relations between leadership and engineers which will surely adversely effect military sales - although certainly less dramatically than the passenger jet side. Compounding that, though, will be declining confidence in US military technology compared to much cheaper and massively superior Russian technology which has been proving itself manifold. The US business model for military hardware has proven itself a loser - too much corruption, privatised greed, and revolving doors leads to hardware that does not work at overinflated prices. On that basis I think even the military side of Boeing should be on it's way to earth (but then again, funny things happen sometimes in this world). I'd rate the passenger jet side chances as 0%, the military side 50-50.

The crash won't come quickly of course, it will be a slow motion crash lasting years or even a couple of decades. Big financial problems and massive layoffs will come pretty soon though, with across-the-board order cancellations and lack of new orders. The real KILLER will be the litigation, which will multiply and multiply and multiply - but that will last for decades.

One really has to question how and why Boeing installed a flight system that could override the pilot and are not simple to disable. This automated control system should never be able overridde the control of their pilot.

@18 BM... they can always do a name change and major redefinition of the company... this sometimes happens, but only i a worse case scenario.. who is going to make and sell airlines outside of airbus and boeing? it has to be an american company..

This is part of the procedure for runaway trim that Boeing recommended for dealing with MCAS problems and was put out as an AD on Nov 7th 2018.

"Initially, higher control forces may be needed to overcome any
stabilizer nose down trim already applied. Electric stabilizer trim can be
used to neutralize control column pitch forces before moving the STAB
TRIM CUTOUT switches to CUTOUT."

Boeing have been constantly omitting details of this system, only admitting to something when they have been caught out. The question in my mind in the last Boeing thread and still is - Is the MCAS system or software also hooked up to the feel and centering unit.
From what I have read, in the models previous to the max, the feel and centering unit put 4x forward pressure on the control column when or if the aircraft was approaching stall conditions.

The Chinese and Russians are gearing up to manufacture passenger aircraft.

Also China has a final assembly line company that fits out the interiors of B-737MAX that could to be badly affected. Mind you, if China took the view that it could train its pilots to operate the plane you can bet that they could get some serious discounts. It is those discounts that are going to save Boeing's bacon as airlines will balance it against training costs.

When they are pouring off the assembly lines at around 10 a week, yes a week, there is some serious stockpile building up that Boing has to finance and store somewhere.

Boeing undoubtedly had the expertise to make it work and evidence suggests that the two planes which crashed were flown by inadequately trained pilots.

Racist nonsense. One of the pilots had 8,000 hours another one 5,000 hours of airtime. The copilots had less but were no newbies. These people where well trained and experienced. The pilots in the first plane that went down did not even know that MCAS existed because BOEING DID NOT TELL THEM. The other knew it existed but were in a situation where several alarms in the cockpit went off simultaneously and with too little height to diagnose the problem and to recover.

@Pnyx - In my opinion, an airplane that can only fly safely with the support of a crutch, this so-called 'trim system', is a misconstruction. Such a thing should in principle not be capable of being approved.

All modern planes have automated trim systems for good reasons. They make sense and work. MCAS was an addition that was only need for rare flight situation. What was wrong was its reliance on one sole sensor that is prone to fail once a while.

@all

Boeing will not fall over this. It made $10 billion profit last years. The short term damage incurred now is likely less. The longterm damage though will be more significant.

"...the disease is an over-emphasis on management at the expense of engineering."
Which is symptomatic of the wider disease of capitalism- a neglect of the interests of the workers in order to maximise the wealth of the capitalists.
There is much more to this than private finance-public finance could produce the same sort of results. The problem is in the system's basic contradictions.
One thing that is evident from this case is that workers management, under which the people actually putting the plane together would exert control over their product would never have allowed this to happen.
One of the 'advantages' of the current system is that the responsibilities, which are actually widely dispersed, are all assumed by 'management.' That is one of its primary functions. And it encourages the promotion of personalities who do not really care much-just so long as they get their mega-rewards. People say that the managers are unqualified, in fact their qualification is ruthlessness and a willingness to gamble with the lives of others. Small wonder that there is a constant interchange between top management and the armed forces, where the same arrogance and selfishness is prized.
In this case that gamble cost not only the lives of hundreds of aircrew and passengers but the careers and livelihoods of thousands of working people who, it would seem, trusted management.
Is it even worth enquiring where the Trade Unions, including those of the pilots and air crew, were?
Anyone following this series of blog posts is bound to say that the work that b has done on this issue, like that which he puts into anything that he posts, has been superb. A credit not only to him but to the taste of those who bookmark this blog and follow it! And particularly to those who, unlike, I am sorry to say, myself make sacrifices to help keep the Moon shining. This is investigative journalism of the kind that has not been seen since the days of the old muckrakers, when, just as now, the vested interests were so powerful that only new and independent writers could stand up to them, and the politicians who crowded their shoulders like tame monkeys.

Thank you b, so much, for all of this. Bevin expressed the appreciation and admiration that I feel much better than I could have, so I'll just say ditto to that. We are very lucky to have you.

Can anyone explain or offer a theory on what's going on with Boeing on the market? Who would be buying their stocks? Seems like there had to be some manipulation of the market to prevent Boeing from crashing out, but if their stock is rising, wtf? Thanks James for that one.

@22 john mk.. thanks... interesting thoughts.. at some point russia and china are going to enter this market place.. clearly it is yet another reason that strikes fear in the heart of the usa, or it's financial backers...

@23 b.. last comment.. that is as i think too.. it is a blip, but one on a downward looking trajectory as i see it..

@24 bevin.. thanks for saying all that.. i donate when i can, and i hope others do as well..

@25 bart.. it is another important part of the design, but i can't see it lasting indefinitely..

@26 mourning dove.. as i understand it, it works like this.. everyone who pays into cpp - canadian pension plan - is putting money in the stock market that mutual funds are directing.. i think it is the same in every other western country.. people have no idea where the money is being invested and if they knew, they would seek an alternative... the gov'ts are in cahoots with the banks, insurance agencies and corporations and it is all tied together in the stock and bond market.. this forms the very biggest corporation, but it is not one that is talked about like boeing for example.. take a look at any one of these on the list of the largest mutual funds..see how they are invested.. https://www.marketwatch.com/tools/mutual-fund/top25largest
they will continue to support boeing and etc. etc. etc.. until people wake up to the trade off between retirement savings and supporting these same corporations that are exploiting us - nothing is going to change..

@26 Who would be buying Boeing stock? Big funds mostly and a few individuals. They obviously expect the FAA to approve a software fix, minimal cancellations of orders, minor litigation and short public memories.

@ bevin who wrote
"
There is much more to this than private finance-public finance could produce the same sort of results.
"
I call BS on your supposition that public finance "could" produce the same results. What sort of obfuscation are you being paid to make? Your dissing of public finance with such an offhanded comment stinks.

@ mourning dove who asks why Boeing stock is rising....

You have read others write about the financialization of corporations, it began within Wall St. When you own the money supply and tools around it, manipulating stock prices is easy and profitable.

With fly by wire tech, the other area of expertise that enters the scene is software design. Boing 737, although the spoilers are fly by wire, the rest is not considered so as, apart from artificial feel, the the pilot has direct mechanical connection to all control surfaces other than the spoilers.
Engineers built an aircraft that could not recover from a stall. Software designers were used to ensure the aircraft would not be put into a stall situation.
In the Lion Air crash, both airspeed indicator and angle of attack were giving faulty readings. The AOA sensor had been replaced after the previous flight as incorrect readings had been showing. In replacing a sensor that feeds information to a commuter, checking and adjusting calibration so the computer reads the signals correctly is part and parcel of the job and I think this would have been done. Although it tested correctly, it did not prevent the problem from reoccurring on the next and fatal flight. Because of this, and the fact that two readings were showing incorrectly, the cause is more likely to be a computer problem - not holding calibration most likely, otherwise some sort of computer glitch causing it to read input signals incorrectly. The other part in the software is that MCAS appears to be delegated to whichever FCC is showing worst case scenario at any one time. The two FCC's each have their own sensors then compare readings. If the FCCs have different readings, from what I have read warning signal appear. In the case of MCAS, the warning signals appear - IAS DISAGREE alert.
• ALT DISAGREE alert.• AOA DISAGREE alert (if the option is installed).• FEEL DIFF PRESS light. - but at the same time MCAS kicks into action based on the faulty readings from the computer that shows worst case scenario.
Each FCC is connected to its own AOA sensor and based on the Emergency Airworthiness Directive put out by Boeing and FAA on 7th Nov the computers do compare AOA sensor readings even if an AOA disagree warning light is not installed
Indicated air speed, Altitude, Angle of attack. These sensors do not all fail at the same time. It is the FCC that is the problem.

An aircraft with catastrophic mode of stall, faulty software designed to patch adhock engineering as required by management for financial reasons.

Would like to see airlines too, catch flak from this debacle. In the name of profits they got rid of the Flight Engineer (a third pilot, like the ad hoc one that saved the Lion Air flight the day before the crash as he didn't have his hands full and could watch the instrumentation for inconsistencies) because they had full faith in the dumb and poorly programmed software to slip up rarely enough to override cost savings. On the off chance anything happens, they can readily point fingers at the plane makers who are then surely found guilty of manufacturing flying deathtraps.

As a long time computer user who laments the ever degrading user interface experience, this "change for the sake of change" seems to be happening everywhere: Unlike older 737 models, the trim wheels no longer produces an audible "click" when it turns. Had it done that, the likely panicked pilots would have been alerted to the trim (and thus MCAS) misbehaving.

Regarding the sixty thousand dollar AOA disagree warning light. Even if 737 max does not have the warning light, it has the two AOA sensors one sends signals to the pilots FCC which is displayed on the pilots screen, the other sensor sends signals to to co-pilots FCC which appears on the copilots screen. In both cases, Lion Air and Ethiopia, only one screen - I think the pilot in both cases - was showing the faulty readings.

@35 Well...er....yes...but those doing the conning don't see things that way. They would probably say they perform a vital service by keeping the financial wheels turning. My own limited experience of the stock markets suggests that smaller investors don't have enough information to make informed decisions.

If you're a twisted sociopathic investor, perhaps the best time to buy stocks of such large companies as Boeing is just after a major disaster that results in huge loss of life.

Recall that in the three weeks or so leading up to 11 September 2001, traders at stock exchanges in NYC and other parts of the world noticed unusual sharemarket activity concerning the stocks of American Airlines, United Airlines and major investment firms like Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch whose head offices were located in the World Trade Center (North and South Towers). The sharemarket activity appeared to suggest that some investors knew in advance that the shares of these companies would fall some time in mid-September and then rise a few weeks later. If someone were to buy the stocks in mid-September and sell them later in October or November, that investor would stand to make a very tidy profit.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks_advance-knowledge_conspiracy_theories#Insider_trading

@42 Yes Jen. You have provided an extreme example of how the stockmarket works. Knowing when to short and when to go long is how the big money is made. It all hinges on having inside information. If for instance you know that the US/China trade war will be settled this week and charges will be dropped against Huawei buying Huawei stock would be a no-brainer. Some people probably already are.

@ mourning dove who wrote
"
How would public finance preclude corruption?
"
While public finance corruption "could" occur as bevin wrote as the default, I believe it is precluded mostly in two ways

1. Without the profit motive the focus "should" be on doing things that make sense for society as a whole and robust safety would be built in and expected...with failure leading to my next point.

2. It is my understanding that in China if you are corrupt, you are prosecuted and then executed. I would think that incentives like this instead of profit would work well to keep the "right" people working for our interests in government or the private sector.

Jen
Thanks for that. Yes, I remember. It's one of many examples of insider information relating to 9/11.
I suppose investors are counting on the US government making sure that Boeing doesn't fail, maybe even strong arming allies to push the fixes through their regulatory agencies. I'm out of my depth with international finance and the markets, it just looks like a giant con to me.

Psychohistorian
If I understand you correctly, what you are proposing requires a completely new political system as well. I think we certainly need one, I just don't know how that would work.

Boeing is in an industry where its half of a Duopoly. Airbus can’t handle much more than what they already have. Airlines who need planes do not have much choice. Boeing will lose some business, Airbus gains some, China is looming but it takes decades to establish a track record for safety. Plenty of business for all.

As I said on day 1, Boeings greatest crime here is fraud, hence the subsequent criminal investigation. The MCAS system for all its shortcomings was an effective bandaid, providing pilots were aware of the system and well trained to recognize when it needed to be disabled and how to do so quickly (at lower altitudes things can get out of hand fast to the point manual control will take too long and prevent recovery). That means extensive training for this scenario on simulators.

However, their marketing sold it as requiring no training, they played the MCAS system down as best they could, and basically defrauded the airlines and put the lives of pilots and passengers at risk. A public hanging of the CEO and FAA chief after a fair trial should send a message. Instead the CEO will get tens of millions in bonus and the FAA chief will get himself a seat on the board after he leaves FAA. Thats how things work

10 years from now Boeing will pay out a few billion or so in damages after a lengthy court battle , after earning many more multiples of that. Small price to pay, slap on the wrist really.

i don't think it is a con game, so much it is the way people are socialized to think life works a certain way.. people get used to a shower once a day.. less then 100 years ago, it would be a bath once a week... we get conditioned and fall into patterns that may not be in our best interests.. the example jen gives is not what the big mutual funds are about and that is where much of the money is... small investors like dh notes - don't have a chance, unless they go along with the big mutual funds essentially.. obviously there are some folks who can work it all, but generally most people are passively involved in the stock/bond market.. they give over the responsibility to looking after their ''investments'' to someone else.. they proceed to not bother to look closely at what their small portion of money is invested in and if they do, they go along with it for convenience.. the big mutual funds will continue to buy shares in boeing and that is who is mostly driving the stock market... unless some big bailout is on the horizon - and bailouts are definitely an important part of the game, in which case banks are more directly involved.. banks also function much like mutual funds - are the same thing often times, or have an important part of their biz in the stock/bond market.. goldman sachs.. is it a bank, an investment firm, a mutual fund company, an insurance company - what is it? it is all of these things.. if things get dicey they will get bailed before the little people will.. one is taught to join forces with these corrupt institutions.. it is the way it is played and generally no one questions how it works, or how it is corrupt.. i could be mistaken, but that is mostly how i see it..

another way to look at it is like playing monopoly.. if you ever did that as a kid, you get a pretty good idea about what the focus on money- capitalism is all about.. more idealistic types are not even interested in playing this game.. people like trump, warren buffett and etc. etc. - live for this ongoing game played out in real terms... aside from ruining life for much of everyone else, it is all they know... it is accepted too, as this is just how life is for a lot of people..

if someone comes along and wants to change any of it, or change the rules and how the game is played, they aren't going to be able to.. some external force has to come along and throw the whole monopoly board upside down for a change in thinking to happen.. this hasn't happened yet, but it would be nice if it did happen... ha ha! we are back to where we were a week ago talking about the collapse of the present world system... it can go on for longer then we might think, but at present there are a number of dynamics on the world stage that suggest to me a major change is on the way... 20 years, 50 years - less likely 5 years, although one can sense it..

perhaps the most obvious way to see it is in the lack of concern or respect for the environment... economy always trumps the environment,but it is the environment that we need to sustain what we have, not the economics.. well, that is my rather long rant in response to your question about whether it is a con or not.. it is just the way people are, getting socialized, or indoctrinated into thinking of life a certain way, and generally being oblivious to just what we have and how fragile it is..

James,
Thanks for that. I think I understand what you are saying. And I mostly agree. By con, I mean a confidence game. Boeing falls if that confidence is lost. Same thing for the broader market. What it reminds me of, with financial experts recommending to buy Boeing, is the credit rating companies falsely giving triple A ratings to junk bonds that created a lot of the trouble in 2008. Someone that I knew at the time had a tidy sum from an inheritance invested in a mutual fund and following his financial advisor's advice to leave his money where it was after the crash cost him another $14G on top of what he lost initially. That's a con. No way around it.

This is not entirely accurate. They built an aircraft more likely to stall without pilot intervention that would make its handling different than other 737. The software was to make adjustments automatically so the pilot would not need to, and thus appear to fly like older 737 to the pilot. This supported their marketing claims that no additional training would be needed

Of course, failing to build in redundancy to the safety system and awareness of what happens to the plane when the system fails due to a faulty sensor and training the pilot to recognize what is happening and how to disable the system and restore trim quickly before the plane hits dirt was the fatal mistake.

Nothing that better training and a requirement for the optional system warning the pilot when AoA sensors reading differ to become standard wont solve

As for the trim wheel clicking it still does but not as loud as older models. The cockpit is especially loud in a 737 during take off so according to one pilot its unlikely to be seen or heard , except at cruising altitude when MCAS would not be activated

@mourning dove.. a confidence game.. sure.. small ones and big ones.. the small ones are do to with perpetuating our little worlds and the big ones are where everyone is in agreement about the way things are when in fact they could be any number of ways.. the financial system is one of these confidence games... it is what we have and most everyone thinks it is working fine for the most part, except those who are left on the outside or perimeters of it.. when more and more are marginalized, the thought occurs that it isn't working..

take democracy and brexit as an example.. the people had a referendum and the marjority voted to leave or brexit the eu.. clearly that vote pissed off the powers that be at the time and they were determined it couldn't happen... so, what type of democracy is it?

boeing.. who wants to fly on a 737max?

after 2008, if anyone wondered about whether the financial system was rigged, they had confirmation during that gong show..

so, yes a confidence game is always in play... the idea of accountability, offering something that is built to last, as opposed to planned obsolescence and etc - was the way of a system that seemed to be working.. it doesn't seem to be working at present.. sorry for the cynicism..

Thousands of people were happy to fly on them until quite recently james. Now it needs a software update, new FAA certification and maybe a name change and they will fly again because there is a massive demand for affordable air travel. Aircraft design has evolved to cope with the demand. Millions of people are flying around at any one time packed like sardines into these machines. They bitch about it but they do it. Seating capacity, airport logistics, fuel efficiency and safety all come together in a delicate balance. It's amazing to me there aren't more accidents.

It is my understanding of Western history that faith in the private financial system is an extension of faith in monotheistic religions and they have both been around about the same amount of time.

I think Western humans are brainwashed into having too much faith and not enough skepticism in the social system that you seem to think is TBTF, just like the private banks in 2008

Yes, changing from private finance will change the underlying social contract, IMO for the better. And it will represent a big change to some and not so much for others. But, one monkey don't stop the show. China has already created and executed 13 five-year plans as a "socialist" form of government but you make it sound impossible for the West to change in this way.....I hope you are wrong.

Psychohistorian
I think I've given you the wrong impression of what I think. Our social and political systems, in my mind, far from being TBTF, are incredibly precarious. We desperately need change, the whole world does. This is unsustainable. I just don't know how that works. I apologize if I've come off as dismissive, that was not my intention.

James,
I feel you. I think I share your cynicism. It's all such a fkng mess. Where do we go from here?

Boeing once was an engineering company with an attached sales department. It 2001, when it moved its headquarter to Chicago, it became a dealership with an attached engineering wing.

IMO the change in culture is not sufficient to explain what occurred.

What is more important is that the 737Max was designed AFTER the Obama Administration's easy treatment of banks after the 2008 Global Financial Crisis.

psychohistorian @4:

The moral failure that occurred did so because of the profit narrative of private finance. If finance were owned by the public this moral failure would not have occurred.

Sweeping statements like this are fraught. The fundamental problem is not capitalism itself but how to regulate it so that it doesn't devolve into crony capitalism/oligarchy.

<> <> <> <> <> <> <>

IMO the problem is moral hazard, not a change in culture or "private finance". Moral hazard is when people see that bad actors are not punished so they chose to become a bad actor as well.

IMO The fundamental failure is the hubris of Boeing execs, which is directly related to the bank bailouts after the 2008 Global Financial Crisis (GFC). Lax regulation only enabled this hubris.

IMO Boeing felt that they could take risks because they had strong government connections (via their defense-related business) just as the banks had had. Thus Boeing, or rather Boeing execs, are insulated from the accountability that a normal company would face.

No bank exec went to jail, and no Boeing exec will go to jail.

James McNerney, CEO 2005 - 2015 has already made tens of millions from Boeing. How much of that came from profits from the 737MAX? He may step down from the Boeing Board of Directors as a result of the crisis but it is likely that he will never be prosecuted. He is American corporate royalty, serving on several Fortune-500 Boards including Boeing, Proctor & Gamble, and IBM.

This has nothing to do with individual or generational inepcy, but the tendency of the profit rate to fall. Google it up and study it carefully, because it is Marx's most important strictly scientific discovery.

@ Jackrabbit who wrote
"
IMO the problem is moral hazard, not a change in culture or "private finance". Moral hazard is when people see that bad actors are not punished so they chose to become a bad actor as well.
"
We already tried that with the Keating savings and loan debacle. In case you didn't notice, they turned around and made it all legal.....you heard Obama tell us what private banking did in 2008 was legal.

I have never believed in the "we just need better regulation" or "we just need to get rid of or marginalize someone(s)"

We need structural change to the social contract that stops requiring us to belong to the God of Mammon religion. Please tell me why we can't have a "competition" between private and public banking, if one is so good and the other so bad?

Please tell me why we can't have a "competition" between private and public banking

Well, a natural monopoly should be a public service. That's part of smart regulation.

TPTB have taken the position (explicitly!) that they have no obligation to protect people from their own stupidity (as they reduce education funding and allow pervasive government and corporate propaganda). This position isn't anti-socialism (as they claim) as much as it is anti-social.

USA capitalism relies on a fundamental FREEDOM cherished by asshats of every persuasion: the freedom to exploit. So we excuse our rulers when we call them "capitalists", "neocons", "politicians", etc. They should rightly be labeled as what they are: sociopaths.

With all due respect, you would do better to rail against the "sociopaths" than to tilt at the windmill of "private capital". For most people capitalism is as water is to fish - they just can't imagine a world without it. But they DO understand and dislike the selfish asshats that prey on people.

"I call BS on your supposition that public finance "could" produce the same results. What sort of obfuscation are you being paid to make? Your dissing of public finance with such an offhanded comment stinks." psycho-historian @30
Come on!!
To suggest that I am 'being paid' because I make the very simple and uncontroversial point that mere public ownership of finance does not and never has led to the removal of the profit motive from capitalism is silly.
The public ownership and control of banking-which has been fairly routine at both the local and central bank level for the past couple of centuries- leaves the control of finance in the hands of the ruling class. Which is to say the capitalists.
I'm surprised that you were unaware of this and had assumed that your insistence on public, rather than private, finance was grounded in some sort of theory which I had missed.
You can nationalise banks as much as you like but so long as the state is controlled by the capitalist class it will make little difference. The Bank of England was nationalised for example in 1946-by a Labour government. In 1988 it was privatised by another Labour government which had concluded that since the state was run by capitalists it made little difference who owned the Bank.
Now I may be mistaken, you might have discovered the sovereign remedy and panacea, but I have not seen evidence that you have.

"Boeing undoubtedly had the expertise to make it work and evidence suggests that the two planes which crashed were flown by inadequately trained pilots."

Racist nonsense. One of the pilots had 8,000 hours another one 5,000 hours of airtime. The copilots had less but were no newbies. These people where well trained and experienced. The pilots in the first plane that went down did not even know that MCAS existed because BOEING DID NOT TELL THEM. The other knew it existed but were in a situation where several alarms in the cockpit went off simultaneously and with too little height to diagnose the problem and to recover.
...
Posted by: b | Mar 29, 2019 3:05:04 PM | 23

Sorry if you think "I can't agree MCAS was a mistake" was too blunt. But I didn't, and wouldn't, say anything to deliberately hurt your feelings. How does 'inadequately trained pilots' become racist(!?). If there was something BOEING DID NOT TELL THEM (the airlines) then the pilots couldn't have been adequately trained - could they?

There's a fair bit of 'missing the point' going on in this thread.
BM | Mar 29, 2019 12:55:29 PM | 16 missed the point I was making in #6 that the airlines which didn't opt for the enhanced version of MCAS which AA bought clearly, imo, didn't bring competent, qualified people into the assessment process when evaluating the MAX.
And that is similar to what appears to have happened at Boeing when Management didn't allow Engineering enough time to complete, troubleshoot, fine-tune, perfect, and DOCUMENT MCAS.

Or to put it another way, American Airlines appear to be a bit old-fashioned and so their MAX assessment team included everyone capable of contributing to the process - regardless of 'Rank' or 'Importance'. And that inclusive mindset yielded a superior version of the MAX than other airlines saddled themselves with.

You wrote "
To suggest that I am 'being paid' because I make the very simple and uncontroversial point that mere public ownership of finance does not and never has led to the removal of the profit motive from capitalism is silly."

Cuba, Iran NK, China are silly to you?

To the rest of your response
I write about removing private finance globally (the sovereign remedy you ask for) and agree that it has failed nationally in the past, IMO, because of the global grip of private finance.

The Western capitalists you write of have screwed China how many times in the past century? And somehow you think that all will continue as in the past.

Please tell me what theory underlies the God of Mammon religion you seem to say TINA for since you accuse me of having no theoretical base.

I am all about human evolution and think it is way past time humanity grew up and ran its own system of finance instead of having ongoing faith in the God of Mammon approach.

What seems to me likely to finish off Boeing, at least in its present corporate form, is the way that the public is going to react to the news that what the Corporation was doing was selling two tier safety systems. The cheaper one of which was unreliable.
Public confidence in air travel is premissed on the belief that all possible safety measures are given the highest priority. When one considers the ludicrous rituals that airports insist on, in the name of passenger safety, in pre-flight inspections the contrast with the cavalier attitudes of Boeing in this matter-which has led to the deaths of far more innocent people than twenty years of "terrorist" attacks on aircraft have- is stark.
This will be seen, in retrospect as yet another nail in the coffin of our imperialist system.
In the link just posted above (@65) is the story of today's decision by China to reward Airbus for producing a safe and efficient 'plane.

Several here have written off competition from China/Russia for the 150 seat narrow body airliner market.

Both countries are under the gun sanctions wise from the US.

The US tried to sabotage the Sukhoi Superjet 100 and the CR21 projects by witholding parts and supplies guaranteed by US partners for various geo-political reasons.

Russia in particular had to initially find alternative suppliers of Carbon Fibre for the wings and other components, and is now building it's own domestic carbon fibre supply chain.

China is struggling to find an engine for its C919, with all western engine makers refusing to supply engines except Rolls Royce ( provided it builds the engines in China) and Russia ( currently struggling to replace engines previously sourced from Motor Sich of Ukraine). Yes, the Ukrainian putsch was for, among other reasons, putting a monkey wrench in the Russian Airliner Industries.

It has taken the Russians 5 years to resolve most of the problems consequent to the Ukrainian putsch. and the

Sukhoi Superjet 100 won't be delivered to Iran before 2022, because Sukhoi needs 2 more years to replace 25% of the airplane with domestic components.

Many here under estimate the impact of Chinese demand, and Chinese resolve to eliminate dependence upon FUKUS/NATO sourced parts and equipment.

The Chinese are replacing US sourced ICs and MPUs and RAM with domestic, and will replace aircraft and ship components with domestic or Russian.

Boeing just lost the 5 year head start the USG bought for it with $4billion of "cookies" proffered by Victoria Nuland and friends. Expect the Chinese to frustrate recertification of the 737 MAX by micro managing the process, and demanding exhaustive verification everything works.

The Chinese/Russians will use the 2 years thus gained to get the CR 21 and C919 certified, flying, and carrying passengers, in Asia if nowhere else.

Only then will a crippled Boeing find its MAX certified, by a China/Russia which won't buy it.

@67 I'm not quite certain what your point is. Do you suggest that Iran, for example, is a socialist economy?
I do not doubt that underlying your arguments there is a theoretical base, I merely say that I haven't seen it outlined. This should not be surprising- it would be tedious indeed if you prefaced every comment that you made with a rehearsal of the theory behind them.
You are quite wrong to say that I suggest that there is no alternative to capitalism. But that is not your fault, I don't explain the basis of my political ideas when I am making a comment on one of the posts on this site.
As to your faith in evolution producing, through a more perfect human being, a change in society, I think that you are short by one "R" as in Revolution.
But don't be so touchy, so hypersensitive. Nobody wants to quarrel with you. Nobody wishes you ill. Your contributions are (almost) always interesting.

There is a lot of philosophising here. But almost nobody talks personal, so I will. I am not getting on a Boeing plane ever again, not 737MAX, not any other Boeing. I am not betting my life and my familily’s life on its restoration. When on a trend path, things have a nasty tendency to get worse rather than better.

The first time I flew in my life, when I was 14, this was on a chartered Soviet Tu-134. I have flown probably 10 long haul flights since then on Soviet planes. The Russians still have a healthy engineering philosophy: they solve a hardware problems with hardware solutions, instead of trying to solve a hardware problem with software. If a plane can’t fly on its own just with a lightly trained pilot behind controls, you got a problem which no software can resolve reliably. A former hardware engineer, for the last 15 years of my life I have been developing software and often coming across unbelievably dumb man-machine interfaces. I constantly reject demands to automate something which should not be automated for good reasons. When hardware and software work together, hardware has to be good enough on its own and then software can improve performance, add an edge. That is healthy design.

When someone is so fundamentally wrong in the base engineering approach, even without considering the totally corrupt system behind, the chances of ever improving are realistically zero. When you buy an airline ticket you are purchasing someone’s risk profile. The Russian planes have fallen and may fall again, but I have not witnessed the technical, management, financial and social rot in them, thus I will rather buy their risk instead of US risk. Even the latest generation of Russian weapons are some proof of the superiority of the Russian engineering, although I wish they never existed. It is not like the Western MIC did not have enough money to build something similar, as supported by the declining public infrastructure in US.

The reality which no amount of paid trolling and media prostitute purchasing can hide is that Boeing, as a dual use company, was profeeting from both its MIC and its civilian business. Boeing’s “smart management” profit strategy has been to overcharge for an average quality MIC product and to underdeliver (less than average) for a market priced product (in competition with Airbus). One sensor where three should have been in place, engineering 101. And this is going to change miraculously f’ing how?

If anyone deserves to be called racist, that should be Boeing. My understanding from reading other websites is there were safety enhancements to MCAS that Boeing knew were necessary but chose to make optional at extra cost to its clients, even though adding them to the MCAS would not have cost Boeing itself extra. This had the consequence of disadvantaging airlines in Third World nations (because they presumably are more concerned with keeping running costs down). Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines, if they had been told the safety enhancements were optional and not necessary, would have balked at having to pay extra; First World airlines on the other hand would have said, screw cost, we're buying the enhancements.

@69 Dr.
Here is one passenger with family, especially for the Superjet 100. This is because the Russians were building passenger planes when the Chinese were only throwing the paper ones into the air - the technology learning curve favours the Russians over the Chinese. The Chinese will come in with a lower price. Also, I am not sure I would want to fly in their co-produced airliner.

Putting the make of the plane on the online booking form will probably become standard, for the market to vote with their wallets and their heads on the shoulders.

Thanks for that great compressed summary of the airliner production information. Nasty tricks can work only if there is a healthy base behind, otherwise the nasty tricks are just pissing into the wind. People adjust and the tricksters loseout.

All fixed wing aircraft stall at a certain point though this varies depending on airfoil shape and wing loading. Off memory it is around 16 degrees give or take depending on airfoil. Generally aircraft are designed in such a way that when or if a low speed stall occurrs, the plane will drop its noise and gain airspeed regaining air flow over the airfoil. If the problem were simply that the max stalled at a slightly lower angle of attack and then dropped its nose, it would not be an issue. Something to note in the manual and ensure pilots were away of the slightly lower stall angle.
That the easy going FAA would not certify the aircraft unless it had something like MCAS means the Boeing max most likely drops tail first. So long as the aircraft held together, it would take a lot of altitude to regain control - that is if the aircraft did not break up while tumbling down.

Psychohistorian
You are being incredibly unfair, reading into statements things that just aren't there. It may be very satisfying to tell yourself that you are evolving while others are static, but that's just self indulgence. You are among comrades, not enemies.

A whole billion dollars - that's going to hurt! The other thing I learned from this fine bit of "news" was this:

A senior captain with 35 years experience with a leading pilot- training organisation told WestBusiness that of the pilots his company was training “only 10 per cent are smart enough to understand every system on an aircraft”.

So there you have it. This isn't going to cost Boeing much, and anyhow, it's the fault of the damned stupid pilots. The article is chock full of the sort of "dog -whistle" and "code" words used here in the US when people of a certain political party want to put down citizens of a certain skin color.

At the end is the final example of why Boeing is essentially blameless in this affair.

For instance, Boeing has been accused of rushing the design of the MAX and selling lucrative safety options as extras, painting the world’s biggest plane maker as an uncaring villain.

But the opposite is the case, with the MAX having the slowest development of any 737 upgrade, and manufacturers loathe options as they add complexity to production lines.

Poor Boeing - victim of evil blogs and the rest of Social Media.

"... it is almost powerless to get its message out.

Except of course to arrange for "journalists" like this one to go to the top of Google News results. Odd thing, but the first story by Mr. Geoffrey Thomas appears on March 11 with this headline:

Almost inconceivable that same problem could strike 737 twice

Yes, the linked site seems to have a brand new Aviation Editor. Odd how the timing on that works, especially for such a "powerless" company like Boeing.

"Boeing undoubtedly had the expertise to make it work and evidence suggests that the two planes which crashed were flown by inadequately trained pilots."

Racist nonsense. One of the pilots had 8,000 hours another one 5,000 hours of airtime. The copilots had less but were no newbies. These people where well trained and experienced. The pilots in the first plane that went down did not even know that MCAS existed because BOEING DID NOT TELL THEM. The other knew it existed but were in a situation where several alarms in the cockpit went off simultaneously and with too little height to diagnose the problem and to recover.
...
Posted by: b | Mar 29, 2019 3:05:04 PM | 23

Sorry if you think "I can't agree MCAS was a mistake" was too blunt. But I didn't, and wouldn't, say anything to deliberately hurt your feelings. How does 'inadequately trained pilots' become racist(!?). If there was something BOEING DID NOT TELL THEM (the airlines) then the pilots couldn't have been adequately trained - could they?

There's a fair bit of 'missing the point' going on in this thread.
BM | Mar 29, 2019 12:55:29 PM | 16 missed the point I was making in #6 that the airlines which didn't opt for the enhanced version of MCAS which AA bought clearly, imo, didn't bring competent, qualified people into the assessment process when evaluating the MAX.
And that is similar to what appears to have happened at Boeing when Management didn't allow Engineering enough time to complete, troubleshoot, fine-tune, perfect, and DOCUMENT MCAS.

Or to put it another way, American Airlines appear to be a bit old-fashioned and so their MAX assessment team included everyone capable of contributing to the process - regardless of 'Rank' or 'Importance'. And that inclusive mindset yielded a superior version of the MAX than other airlines saddled themselves with.

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Mar 29, 2019 10:06:29 PM | 66

There are no 'adequately pilot' for the 737 MAX line not from the so called third world not as well from the first world. Until Boeing and FAA and everybody else put standard of competence to operate the aircraft there's only those that with experience flying them. As i see how Boeing react they wouldn't compile an 'adequate' training about the 737 MAX because they have to insists the 737 MAX is one of the same old 737 that require no further crew training to fly. That's the primary problem and that is why those 'third world' airlines weren't at no fault for purchasing default model of the 737 MAX.
Simply airliner that buy the default model are airliner that are conned to buy unsafe deathtrap and airliner that bought the model with extra accessory are conned to pay extra for 'default' safety system.

Hoarsewhisperer@6 - "In a previous Boeing/MAX thread at MoA someone posted a comment revealing that American Airlines ordered all of their MAX airliners with the full bells & whistles version of MCAS."

MCAS itself doesn't have customer options. It's a sub-function of the Speed Trim System (STS) on all Max 8 Flight Control Computers, but trims at different times for different reasons in the opposite direction, and have other potentially confusing differences.

The customer options in question are indicators (gauges/warning lights) for the AOA readings, which provide more data, but were not required. The AOA sensor signals are read directly by the Air Data Internal Reference Units(ADIRU), which previously sent the measurements to the corresponding L/R (pilot/copilot) Flight Control Computers on the sensor's side.

The customer options were 1) to show the actual AOA reading as a gauge on the Primary Flight Display where the artificial horizon is displayed, and 2) show an AOA Disagree warning message on the same display.

Boeing and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) made the AOA alert an optional feature for the 737 MAX, meaning it was not deemed critical for safe operation.

...

Several carriers, including American Airlines, Southwest Airlines, Canada’s WestJet, Singapore Airlines offshoot SilkAir and Dubai’s flydubai, said the AOA DISAGREE alert was installed on their 737 MAX jets before the Lion Air crash.

Some airlines have also installed a separate optional gauge that gives pilots a direct AOA reading in the cockpit.

American Airlines and SilkAir already have the gauge, while Southwest said it decided after the Lion Air crash to install the gauge on future 737 MAX deliveries to provide “supplemental visual feedback for identifying erroneous AOA data”.

Air Canada said it would install the gauge “soon” but did not clarify whether it had made the decision before or after the Lion Air crash.

Part of Boeing's 'fix' is to make the PDF AOA Disagree warning standard on all Max 8s, and offer the AOA 'guage' as a no-cost option to customers that choose to have it displayed on the PFD, as shown in this diagram [link]

@dh 55
Your comments reads reasonable in an environment of no competition. Under monopoly, created through sanctions on economic competitors and heavy Russiagate style propaganda about Russian and Chinese technology, yes, people will keep flying US branded planes. But monopoly is not a natural state of anything, it is very anti-entropy. This then requires huge spending of resources to maintain, which eventually drains the sanctioneer. Entropy, chaos and free choice always eventually win.

How long before people in the West connect the dots and understand that Russian engineering is equal if not better than the US engineering? That they are being lied to about this as almost just about everything else by the PR and spin-obsessed compatriots.Is not ironic how similar are:
1) the use of software to solve hardware engineering problems and
2) the use of PR to cover the greedy behavior,
both are "soft" approaches where solid approaches are needed?

Finally, for decades the West has been manipulating the Soviet civilian airliner track record. Whilst they would always talk about safety of own air-travel based on accidents per miles flown, they would always disregard the size of the former Soviet Union (the largest territory in the World) and the miles flown per accident there. Of course, using miles flown as a criterion is a pure spinning bull of the Western kind because nobody takes a plane ride to go buy groceries. It is a deliberate comparison of apples and oranges because apples look better.

@PavewayIV 79
I care to suggest that Boeing should have added as an extra-priced option, instead of a warning light, a female voiced warning to the pilots: "You are f'ed, you are f'ed, you are f'ed ...... and after you die our spin will accuse you of incompetence, brown-skin and flight inexperience!"

"It is not creative minds that produce revolutions, but the obstinate conservatism of established authority. It is the blank refusal to accept the idea of an orderly evolution towards new things that gives a revolutionary quality to every constructive proposal."

@PeterAU1 75
You are a political extremist for me now, but I believe that you have put your finger right on the issue of the inherent instability of the 737MAX design. I only add to yours that such catastrophically poor hardware design cannot be compensated for with software, which is then yet another single-point-of-failure in the whole chain of engineering catastrophes. This is pure, unbelievable design madness: what if a plane hits a flock of birds (engines gone) and the lithium battery power on the plane fails? No working MCAS to push your nose into the ground, but try to land this tail-heavy piece of flying crap onto a river as a hero pilot did with an Airbus!

I got to see some stuff that we just don't see in Redfern, urbanised or long settled areas.
Before that, my views were the same a yours. My mates are still the same.
On the boeing - much appreciate your comments here especially concerning the soviet aircraft and the thought behind them.

dh - see @80 kizas comments to you.. and even better read kizas comments on fixing a hardware problem with software.. i think it is a really dumb idea.. in fact - read all of kizas comments as there is some good humour in them too.. here is one line i really liked @81.. thanks kiza!

one of the best quotes for me is from jackrabbit - "No bank exec went to jail, and no Boeing exec will go to jail." again, it is the accountability issue that i mentioned earlier.. this is the reality - no one will be held accountable.. what kind of system/gov't/ etc. etc. can work in that type of environment??

psychohistorian - i tend to see it like @76 mourning dove.. no need to get wound up over bevins comments as they are filled with good intent..

a most insightful comment from @69 Dr. George W. Oprisko in case anyone missed it..

"Boeing just lost the 5 year head start the USG bought for it with $4billion of "cookies" proffered by Victoria Nuland and friends. Expect the Chinese to frustrate recertification of the 737 MAX by micro managing the process, and demanding exhaustive verification everything works.

The Chinese/Russians will use the 2 years thus gained to get the CR 21 and C919 certified, flying, and carrying passengers, in Asia if nowhere else.

Only then will a crippled Boeing find its MAX certified, by a China/Russia which won't buy it."

Thank you very much guys, I really like reading the writing of so many smart people here. When we put political views aside, as we should, then we are a fantastic bunch of people brought together by this honest-to-truth investigative journalist b. If b can keep up the good work, this will remain the #1 zine in the World in my personal view (worth contributing to maintain). ZH and many other independent sources started quoting b's material, there can hardly be a better endorsement then by the readers and the competing sources.

This is in contrast to the totally prostituted cognitive alternatives in MSM. The key problem with all propaganda is that it appeals to the lowest common denominators among us and the lowest traits inside us. Most people like to know and understand, that is why we have our intellect, but this is exactly what TPTB want to suppress with MSM noise, to turn us into the right-buying and the right-voting automatons. Let us keep fighting by exchanging our thoughts.

Just one final comment before I go back to work. Please do not misunderstand me regarding the Russian civilian planes. I am not Russian. In my view, at the moment, in life-critical aircraft engineering the Russians are par with and possibly slightly better than other Europeans (Airbus), but way ahead of US. This is not because of US engineers then because the rotten greed has permeated absolutely every aspect of US. In my view, limitless killing and catastrophically poor life-critical engineering must be, if not through the same people, then somehow "cosmically" connected. The US citizens and their Jewish-elite (the chosen among the Jews) cannot replace Kant's fundamental ethical maxim with a "win the zero-sum game" at anyone's expense, which is leading to the killing of so many people, and expect that this rot is not going to permeate back into every other aspect of their lives. Yes, ethics is a boomerang! In other words, the zero-sum game outlook can only continue into US deaths next instead of Indonesian and Ethiopian this time. Attitudes do come back to hunt us!

I am not claiming that Russian engineering will always remain superior. But maybe, just maybe, the traces of the classical Christian fundamentals still tindering in the Russian soul could protect the Russian society from the zero-sum game profiteering of the Anglo-Jewish West. Admittedly, the Russian engineers I have come across are far from Christian angels. It is the renewed Russian political and economic system, after the total collapse of the 90s (remember the Kursk disaster?), which appears to keep Russia on the straight and the narrow for now, at least in the life-critical areas. Maybe once one touches the bottom by experiencing the full consequences of doing things wrong one can tell the importance of living (and engineering) right, the cliche: what does not kill you makes you stronger. After a couple of US planes filled with US passengers dive, then the US may get a chance to change, or not.

FYI Boeing's projected 2019 revenue (before the disasters) is $110 B. I was surprised that only 27 B is derived from its military division. See Table 8. This means that it may not be helped much by its role in the MIC.

If only we could keep the "R" out of the equation. But can we really hope to?

Just recently in a discussion with my ideological mentor i asked: "You want the revolution at peace, how's that for a contradiction?". Maybe since he lived through one, he's allowed to believe it. Maybe since the human lives cost (fingers of one hand count) pales in comparison to the regime that preceded it. This was Portugal 1974. But maybe the necessary and hoped for social transformation was not deep enough. Soon social democrats hand in hand with conservatives and liberals alike at the helm of the country (Presidency and Governance respectively) delivered it back into the hands of the overarching system - Capitalism. In effect it transited from the national/fascist scale into the european/globalist scale. This was mere 12 years after the (r)evolution, and by 1992 with "mais triste" treaty, it was finally consummated, lasting 18 years total. With few exceptions, the nation claps, sheds joy tears and hums its hymn.

Nation deceived once again. Here is the point: Capitalism as a practical system demonstrates resilience against evolution, it does not allow itself to resolve its fundamental contradictions. The latter persisting, aggravate social interaction which regularly reach breaking points of higher or lesser intensity and violence, which the documented history may attest.

Shall we allow ourselves to believe it, as when, time and again, evolution became just a trade-off before our eyes? You can have work, but shall have no health. You can have education but shall not eat. You can have shelter but shall not sleep. You may raise a family but shall have no room for love. Let me stop right here, this is turning into a rant.

Here's an alternate quote: "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable" John F. Kennedy

I also whish for gentle rain to stop this fire, but i'm afraid only a tsunami will.

@20 Jameswho is going to make and sell airlines outside of airbus and boeing? it has to be an american company..
Given the number of countries under various kinds of US sanctions I was wondering about this.

I agree that Russian engineering is superior at this point, but I think pinning it all on greed and corruption is no correct.

In US corporate culture a decades old gyno-coup d'etat has been talking place. After Obama, the LGBQ's jumped on the band wagon with PoC's and Feminists, and the old engineering meritocracy was sacrificed at the alter of "equality". Since the Engineering profession had for centuries been composed of mostly white males, these guys had to be put at a disadvantage to allow other "underprivileged" groups to get their "fair share". This too is Ethics. This had the unintended consequence of forcing large corporations to hire less qualified candidates from a much smaller pool, driving their prices even higher. It could also be related to the outsourcing and offshoring to India, where everyone is a PoC.

Often this also entailed hiring inexperienced people directly into high level management too.

When Obama got elected at the peak of the 2008 financial crisis and all the major banks from JPM and Goldman to Wells Fargo were forced go to Paulson and Bernanke and beg for liquidity and guarantees, one of the unwritten agreements was that Feminists, LGBQ and PoC would be promoted to senior positions and onto the board. The same thing happened to any manufacturing company that was forced to accept hand outs. Mary Barra was chosen by the elites to head General Motors, whose manufacturing processes are now so crappy that they have given up on sedan production in North America, leaving the Toyota Camry and Honda Accura to eat their lunch.

We can also observe the same collapse in the qualitiy of US made Movies, Music, Food and yes, Government.

The nearly perfectly inverse correlation between the success of the war against white European males and the collapse of US prowess in engineering, production and business management really tells the whole story.

To the extent that there has been a massive malpractice in Boeing company, there will be no doubt some repercussions but as the increase in its share prices indicate there will not be a great chastisement for the following reasons;
1- This company is part of the deep state of the new world order and as such immune from the consequences of its actions.
2- The US deep state needs to keep Trump in good footing for furthering the hidden agenda designed for the next few years therefore, it will hush-up things in a mirage of smoke and mirrors as per usual.
3- The government function in US has for many years been condensed to coarse and control of the population. Therefore, it is not a valid expectation to see the different parts of branches of government behaving as they do in an ordinary government which is to safeguard rules and abiding by laws. The fact that Europeans did not allow the crashed plane's black box to be analyzed by the US authorities testify to this fact.
4- US is in midst of 30 years of recession exacerbated by 10 years of deep depression. This will give the PTB as they see it the right to continue falsifying anything and everything rather than facing the facts. As such, like stock market illusory bonanza and Fed plunge protection team operations and narrative management, in this case too there will be a damage limitation exercise to send this episode to the back of the minds.
5- As the prices of every stock and share or commodity is contrived, phony and coming out of the deep state hat, the Boeing's shares will not suffer and any negative change shall be re-deemed in a slight of hand as other share prices do regularly.
What this all tell us is the disastrous position US as a failed state is in, where the biggest business is bad business and good and bad have changed places never to be put right again. Pity!

I suspect the biggest impact on the United States is going to be the loss of trust in the FAA which as a result of cultural changes that started long before Trump became president, has lost the trust of the rest of the world. With Trump in power for the full eight years, it's going to take a long time for the FAA to regain that trust, and perhaps it never will. As someone once said, “My good opinion once lost is lost forever.”

But this won't just impact the FAA, it will affect all the regulatory bodies of the United States. It doesn't help that the United States has weaponized its regulatory bodies as part of its arsenal for the real economic warfare it's conducting throughout the world.

America is toast where manufacturing is concerned. No matter the quality of engineers the fact that America produces pretty much nothing and anything it does produce (or should I say assemble) has to come from low wage serf states thus the poor quality. That said, a aircraft 'requiring' computers to stabilize out of trim flight should not be used for commercial purposes. Boeing has sacrificed over 300 people on the alter of cheap... The entire country has taken 'cheap' to a new level. When the USA had production it produced quality products. We exported our production so the same corporate management types with the same Boeing attitude could increase their personal wealth. Today almost everything is produced with Harbor Freight quality.... But it's cheap!

@80 Perhaps it depends what you mean by competition. Americans may talk about competing but what they really mean is winning. It's Darwinian basically. I hesitate to call it an American characteristic but "Loser!!!" is the supreme insult in American highschools.

Trump strikes me as supremely American in this regard. He sees sanctions and propaganda in terms of peaceful competition. Winning is everything to him and 'all options are on the table' if that's what it takes.

That said there is also a large element of bullying and bluster in Trump's behavior. He is getting his bluff called recently in places like Ukraine, Venezuela and Korea and it is a new experience for him.

In my watch pocket is a FitBit One, a fitness tracker about the size of my little finger. In it is a tiny altimeter that counts floors. In my basement are some carpenters' levels that use a bubble to indicate, well, levelness.

Why do aircraft manufacturers have to make calculation of the AoA such a big problem?